Welcome to Slate!
We’ve done a lot of implementations. Like, a lot a lot… both as consulting partners and as Slate captains at our previous institutions. Here are some things we’ve learned along the way. This is the basis of our implementation philosophy.
you’ve gotta have a plan
So you’re going to implement Slate. Now what? You’ll want to have a basic idea of your roadmap to start. What are the big things that need to be built and done? Slate makes a roadmap available, but you can also talk to peers in the Slate community (check Slack and Facebook) and consulting partners about what to consider. The odds are high, though, that you have an idea already about what your building blocks and milestones are - when major pieces need to go live, when old systems are turned off, or when the “new era” needs to begin.
Start with your milestones. Write down the dates (as specific as possible) that you will need to plan around. This might be when an application needs to go live, when a fiscal year begins, when a class arrives on campus, or when a legacy system or contract expires. And give yourself some breathing room. Plan for the project not to go according to plan. Build in some extra time before milestone dates for testing, review, and unexpected delays so you won’t get caught off guard.
Consider your resources. Similarly, take a close look at the calendar and what other responsibilities your team will have. The implementation team is almost always taking on this Slate project while keeping up with their normal job. “Slow times” are getting rarer, but if you have them, try to stack as much of the Slate project as possible during those times. (Mind your milestones though!)
“One step at a time.” “Don’t run before you can walk.” “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” - All important suggestions, all essentially getting at the same idea. As you start to assemble your plan, be realistic about how much you can accomplish in a given week or month. Don’t base your whole strategy on superhuman effort. We know you’re awesome and you can (and will!) accomplish a lot during this project. But, it’s best to set realistic goals that allow time for a methodical and considered implementation.
Slate time is sacred. Your Slate project is going to require a time investment. Be sure to set aside concentrated time for this project. You already know you’ll need to schedule project meetings and check-ins. But you’ll also need to have time to learn and build. It will feel like learning a language. Those team meetings are the conversational part of your practice. But you’ll need to learn the vocabulary and syntax, too. Allow your brain to start developing this new knowledge base by dedicating time during the week to reading documentation, learning how to build things in Slate, and completing those tasks assigned to you in the project meetings.
teamwork makes the dream work
You can’t implement Slate alone. We don’t mean that you have to have a consulting partner - it helps, but lots of institutions are well-situated to handle an implementation on their own. We do mean that your implementation will need a core team committed to seeing the project through. You don’t need an army. You don’t need technical experts in every meeting. But you should be looking for:
Subject matter expertise. Who in your office knows how processes work now? Who knows what deliverables are required at the end of the day? You’ll need someone on your team who is intimately familiar with your current practice and can manage the translation into Slate functionality.
Decision making. While you’re implementing Slate there will be many, many decision points to be navigated. You’ll need people on the team who are both empowered to make decisions and capable of making them. Analysis paralysis (when there are too many options and we get stuck thinking through every last one instead of making the choice) will slow your implementation to a crawl.
Technical Support. “I thought you said you don’t need experts?” True, for the most part. But when you initially set up your Slate instance, you’ll need to do things like create a subdomain, set up single sign-on, and configure DKIM authentication. And when it’s time to build an integration with your SIS or document management system, you’ll probably need partners who can help push and pull data around your campus. Loop in your IT department early and make sure you’ll have the required support when the time comes. Remember, they’re usually just as busy as you are.
Curiosity and Excitement. If we could only keep one item on this list, it would be this one. Your implementation will be challenging - there are lots of questions to be answered, solutions to be designed, and changes to manage. You’ll want team members who can approach these with optimism. Implementing Slate is an incredible opportunity for your team to identify what’s great about your business process now and what can be reimagined. This is also a great time to dust off the “someday we’d love to” list and see what Slate makes possible. Curiosity is the main factor in turning a Slate user into a Slate captain and ultimately a Slate champion. There’s always a path to completing projects in Slate, but it takes a willingness to explore and experiment to find that path.
learn by doing
The single best way to learn Slate is to build Slate. Once you’ve got your team assembled and your plan in place, spend time exploring. You can learn a lot from documentation, but using your newly developed Slate skills is absolutely necessary if you want to cement them.
Explore and experiment. Implementation is a great time to try out new functionality in Slate. Your instance isn’t live yet - there’s not a lot of damage you can do at this point. (But please still be careful). Even if your instance is live, the test environment is a fantastic resource and can be your best friend here. Not sure how a form will actually work? Build a few versions and try them out. Not 100% clear on configurable joins? Create some test records and example data and write yourself some queries, then compare your results to what you were expecting.
Push yourself. Listen, we know configurable joins are hard. Portals too. But every rockstar on the Slate forums showing off their independent subquery web services push to an embedded anonymous access portal started out where you are now - not knowing anything about Slate. Approach Slate like a puzzle - you know the end result you’re trying to achieve, so try out different ways of getting there. Don’t worry about mistakes yet, and don’t worry about sidetracks. Get lost a little bit, then fight your way back to solid ground, and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your experience grows.
CASE the forums. The Slate community loves to share knowledge and ideas. Take advantage! Read about what others are doing in the forums, attend community conversations, surf Facebook and Slack, and comb through archived conference presentations. Then CASE (“Copy And Steal Everything”.) Use your best judgement and give credit where it’s due. But step-by-step walkthroughs, Suitcase IDs, and offers of help are all there as starting points for you to bring your own projects to fruition.
invest in the long term
Your main goal in year one will be to get up and running in Slate. Business processes will get recreated or reimagined, data and documents will get migrated, and day-to-day life will settle into a new normal. But while the immediate goal is making it to “go-live”, your success in Slate every year after that depends on the decisions you make now.
What about next year? You should be asking yourself this question over and over again. Don’t lose sight of the long term when you’re building out your solutions this year. Whether it’s application cycle prep, next year’s giving day, or a new class of students arriving on campus, someone (probably you) will be revisiting your work in the future. So be kind to yourself by creating tools and processes that will work every year with minimal upkeep. Consider ways you can generalize solutions or utilize flexible resources (Hello Content Blocks). And leave yourself some documentation!
Seriously: Documentation. This is a bit of a repeat from the last point, but it’s important. We’re big believers in active documentation - write down what you’re doing, and why, at the same time that you’re doing it. Attach your notes to forms and queries, add entries to Slate Scholar, or keep your preferred documentation tool close at hand. Documentation is only ever useful if you’re going to look at it, so save your documentation somewhere that you (and others) will always be able to find it.
Keep a project list. You won’t be able to finish everything you’ve ever hoped and dreamed about in one year. And over the course of the implementation, new projects will keep appearing on your radar. You’ll identify things you want to take on, AND colleagues will come to you with great ideas of their own. We repeat: you can’t do it all in one year. Stay focused on the goal at hand - completing your implementation and building a great foundation for continued growth in the years ahead. Moving those other items onto your future projects list helps you keep your priorities straight and your implementation on track.